Oh, the Humanity

in France in the eighteenth and nineteen centuries. In those days, if someone offended you, or you were competing for the love of a particular woman, you could challenge the other person to a duel. Before the late eighteenth century, words were the weapon of choice. In eighteen forty one The History of Dueling, the author outlined dozens of rules to

be followed for a successful duel. For example, rule forty three dictated what moves a fighter could make with the sword, stating combatants are allowed to raise themselves, to stoop, to vault to the right or to the left, and to turn around each other. Rule forty four allowed combat to stop if one party declared themselves wounded, or if one of the witnesses noticed that someone had been hurt. And

just how common was it? Well, King Louis the Thirteen pardoned more than eight thousand people for committing murder during a duel, So yeah, a lot pistols only made the practice more deadly too. A puncture or a cut from a blade was not necessarily a death sentence back then, but a bullet in a crucial part of the body could be the end of someone immediately or worse days later. Alexander Hamilton's famously died thirty one hours after are being

shot by Aaron Burr in eighteen o four. Dueling was an act that was both barbaric and pointless, yet some people saw no other way to settle their differences, especially two Frenchmen in the early nineteenth century who really escalated the situation. Their duel took place only four years after Hamilton's fateful trip to we Hawk in New Jersey, a young dancer with the Paris Opera known as Mademoiselle tira Vette had been in a relationship with one Monsieur du

Grand Prey. It seemed like things were going pretty well for them, but it seems that she was also seen Monsieur Lapique on the side. So when Grand Prix found out that he was not the only person in his beloved life, he did what all men in his situation did in eighteen o eight France, he challenged the other man to a duel. Of course, these were macho, testosterone fueled gents who refused to settle for a standoff with

pistols in the middle of a field. No, in order to win the hearts and hand of Mademoiselle Tiravet, they needed to face off in a spectacular way, high above the ground in hot air balloons. They met on May three, still in the middle of a field, mind you, but on this occasion they stood by as two large balloons were heated up and inflated. Each man had also brought a second, a witness, to be responsible for making sure

that the duel was carried out as expected. Now, in a normal duel, the second would walk away afterward and go home to their families. In this instance, however, each second had resigned himself to dine in the event the other balloons occupants succeeded. Because the goal here was not for the doelers to shoot one another. Grand Prix and the peak. Each man armed with the blunderbuss would fly high into the air with their seconds and fire at

their opponent's balloon. Whoever managed to pop the other man's balloon would receive Mademoiselle tear of its hand. The other well, he and his second would plummet to their deaths below. A large crowd eathered on the morning of the event, excited to watch four grown men get into a couple of hot air balloons and shoot each other down. Rather than talk through their feelings like adults, they climbed inside and each balloon began to rise up, up, up. They

went to a half mile over the crowd. When they reached the appropriate height, both men got into position. Lapique shot first. He fired wide and missed Grand prix balloon entirely. Grand Prix returned fire, and it was his success. He managed to shoot a hole in Lapique's balloon, sending careening into a terrace below. Lapique and his second were killed instantly in the crash, while Grand Prix climbed even higher in triumph before floating down gently to the woman below

that he loved. The whole ordeal was over quickly, but it left a lasting impression on dueling history, and it reminds us today of that age old cliche what goes up must come down. Historians and scholars have spent decades working with the world's most mysterious documents and artifacts. For example, there's the Voyanage manuscript and illustrated codex, written during the fifteenth century in an unknown language. It first showed up in nineteen twelve and was believed to have been decoded

as recently as two thousand seventeen. However, those translations were quickly debunked, and so the manuscript is still considered uncracked. Then there's also the shug Burrow Inscription, a ten letter sequence carved into a monument in England, and although the inscription has existed since the mid seventeen hundreds, we are no closer to understanding its meaning than we were two and a half centuries ago. But one particular historical object

didn't require extensive study to understand. In fact, researchers seemed to have figured out exactly what it was pretty quickly, or so they thought. It was called the Shapira Scroll, named for the man who revealed it to the world, Moses Wilhelm Shapira. He was born in eighteen thirty in what is now Ukraine and worked as an antiques dealer in Jerusalem. Shapira first brought the scroll to Paul Schroeder, a German scholar and interpreter who specialized in Semitic languages.

Schroeder asked about its origins, to which Shapira replied that it had been discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea. However, when University of Berlin professor Hermann Strach asked Shapira about the scrolls provenance, he was told the fantastical story about how a group of people had accidentally found them rolled up in a bundle of rugs in a mountain cave. In fact, depending on who he was talking to, Shapira

told a different story. So what was the scroll he found? Well, it wasn't really a scroll at all, and that it wasn't a long roll of paper. Instead, the Shapira scroll was comprised of fifteen separate strips of leather, each with a modified Bible verse from the Book of duter Ronomy

written across them. What's more, the language written on each of the strips was Paleo Hebrew, an older version of the Hebrew language found on stone walls and tablets beginning in the thirteenth century b c. According to Shapira, his fragments had been created before the fall of Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. In other words, they were the oldest known Biblical documentation in existence. He sent facsimiles of the strips all over Germany to have them authenticated. Historians, scholars, and

librarians studied them closely. The Royal Library of Berlin wanted to purchase the originals so that they could be examined by German students, but Shapira had no interest in having his scroll put under the microscope for handfuls of students to study. Instead, he suggested that the British Museum by the whole collection for one million pounds. The public was enthralled and flocked to the museum to see two of

the scrolls in person. A Bible scholar named Christian David Ginsburg took possession of the remaining fragments to analyze them. It took him a month, but when he was done, Ginsburg came to a very important conclusion they were forgeries. Now Shapira wasn't a stranger to fake documents. And antiquities. In eighteen seventy, he had tried fooling buyers with fabricated

artifacts from the ancient Moabite culture. Why anyone entertained his latest attempt was a mystery, but many did, especially the public, who were captivated by the existence of the strips. According to Ginsburg, it appeared that Shapira had cut up a Yemenite Torah scroll. These scrolls were very old, possibly hundreds of years, and quite valuable. Shapira had sold Yemenite scrolls to the British Museum before, and it was believed that he had cut strips from the empty bottom margin to

create his own biblical relics. Of course, Shapira wrote a letter to Ginsburg in which he declared his innocence and the whole ordeal. He believed the scroll was authentic, but claimed that if it was fake, someone else had been responsible for its creation and had duped him. Shapira then traveled to Amsterdam, where he sent another letter, this time to Edward Augustus Bond. Bond was the primary librarian for the British Museum, and Shapira begged him to check the

scrolls again. Sadly, he never got his answer. Six months later, he took his own life. The Shapira scrolls went up for auction a few years afterwards, selling for a measly ten pounds. After eighteen eighty nine, no one saw them again. Interest in the artifacts all but disappeared until the mid

nineteen hundreds. Between nineteen forty seven and nineteen fifty six, the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves alongside the Dead Sea discoveries that seemed eerily similar to what Moses Shapira used to say about his leather fragments. Scholars to this day are divided on the true providence of the Shapira Scroll, with some claiming that it could have been legitimate, while others maintained the original conclusion that

the scroll was a forgery. Moses Shapira might have been responsible for one of the greatest historical discoveries ever recorded, but his previous deceptions that ruined his chances for success. Heartbreaking, for sure, but also oh so curious. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the

show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me, Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.